SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

It is hard to define engaged Buddhism. But I think it has to do with a willingness to see how deeply people suffer; to understand how we have fashioned whole systems of suffering out of gender, race, caste, class, ability, and so on; and to know that interdependently and individually we co-create this suffering... Some days, I call this engaged Buddhism; on other days I think it is just plain Buddhism — walking the Bodhisattva path, embracing the suffering of beings by taking responsibility for them.

THIS MONTH AT UPAYA

Dharma Talk, Daily Practice

7:00 am, 12:20 pm, and 5:30 pm. Please arrive five minutes early for sitting periods and events. Park in the East parking lot (Second driveway — the one farther from town.)

Please note these changes to the regular meditation schedule: There will be no midday meditation session on March 15 and 23. The 12:20 session will take place in the Cerro Gordo Temple on March 11, 12, 14, 16, and 22. The Thursday seminar will take place instead of the midday zazen on March 13.

The Fusatsu Full Moon Ceremony will take place Sunday, March 16 at 5:30 p.m. not Thursday, March 27.

ROSHI JOAN: News, Teachings, Travels

Roshi Joan is at Upaya in the midst of Upaya's Buddhist Chaplaincy Training program with Cohorts 6 and 7. She had the honor of ordaining Chaplain candidates as Lay Ministers this past Sunday. See above. On this coming Saturday, March 15 at 11AM, she will give Jukai to a large group of chaplain candidates and sangha members. Please join us for this powerful ceremony. She will go to the Refuge on Sunday for a personal retreat prior to the G.R.A.C.E. training the following week. Note she will leave for Japan on March 21 and return April 14.

We are accepting applications for Upaya's resident program. Please consider joining Roshi, Visiting Teachers, and Upaya for three months or more of dedicated practice and learning. By application, click here.

Roshi as well has a number of papers she has written on compassion. If you wish to receive a copy, please write the office: upaya@upaya.org

For several new videos of interviews with Roshi Joan on Upaya's Blog, click here.

Roshi Joan started a Google+ Community and more than 2000 people have joined so far. Click here to join.

Roshi now has five new books available for sale at Upaya: Four are photography books — "Seeing Inside," "About Face," "Original Face: Unmediated Expressions of Tibet, Nepal, Burma," and "Leaning into the Light." "Lone Mallard" is a book of her haiku. In addition, over a hundred of her remarkable photos are available to look at (and purchase) on Upaya's website:https://www.upaya.org/seeing-inside/

UPAYA'S BLOG

Contemplare et Contemplata Aliis Tradere. During his talk Contemplation in Action, Joshin shared this motto from the Catholic Dominican religious order, which he translated as, to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation. When he was 19, Brian started studying philosophy at a Benedictine Abbey in preparation for priesthood and two years later entered the Dominican order where he took religious vows and lived in community for almost five years. He felt the “deep desire,” then as now, “to live in a contemplative community and be socially engaged.” and appreciated the way the Dominicans bring these two together. But ultimately he felt he wasn’t a believer in the theology that he was studying and he was concerned about how “religious leadership translated to power” in the Catholic Church.

Carroll Dunham tells another story of the services of the Little Suns: "We trudged through tropical heat, giving way to typhoon storms before we reached the small village of Go, nestled high above the Ganesh Himal in the rural region of Tsum, only opened to Western tourists five years ago. As I walked along the trail, I was suddenly accosted by old familiar faces. Tsering Doma and Pasang hugged me and showered me with nasturtium flowers, tears flowing from their wrinkled, familiar creased faces. Never did they suspect to see me: it had been almost twenty years since they had first wept when presenting the request that my husband and I sponsor the education of their youngest son, Rinzin Norbu, so he would not have to porter in the village as his father had.

Her story continues: "Rinzin had lived with us in Kathmandu and studied there and though we always fantasized about a visit to his home in this once-restricted area, it just never materialized, due to the distance: a good five days walk from the roadhead. They led me inside their dark, smoky home, up the ladder, because the animals lived in the first floor, and they in the second floor, around a smoky open hearth. Tsering Doma, now in her sixties, her eyes streaming and pink from the excessive smoke, wanted to know all about my family, and Pasang proudly pulled out old faded photos of my husband taking him down to Bodhgaya in India where the Buddha gained realization under the Bodhi tree. Tom had arranged an audience with the Dalai Lama, who gave him a dharma name, and Pasang hadn't stopped glowing since.

"His knees were shot from portering heavy loads for wealthier villagers up and down these tough mountains and now all Pasang and Tsering Doma wanted to do was read sacred pechas---Buddhist scripture. But their home was too dark. Pasang and Doma joined the Nomads Medical Clinic expedition members as they picniced for lunch nearby their home. Doctor Charlie McDonald pulled out some little suns and their smiles broke out with delight. Folks offered to sponsor a stove, to help Tsering Doma's watering eyes and smoke-filled chest from the open fire. Their son Pasang offered to walk the five days into Tibet, organize a porter and carry down the heavy stove and install it. So with chances of smoke reduced and light to read Buddhist prayers by, we bowed and touched heads as per tradition and bade our farewell, as they insisted I return with my family. So here, the Little Suns are an invaluable tool not just for providing essential light for cooking meals in the evening, but in preserving traditional Himalayan Buddhist culture."

I was surprised when Charlie led me to think of the Little Suns as being about respiratory health. I thought of them primarily as being a response to climate change, something I think about a lot. They are, after all, low-carbon lights (zero carbon once they're manufactured from about the same amount of petroleum as a kerosene lantern might burn in an evening). They are alternatives to burning fossil fuel or setting electrical grids for light, and with their yellow-sun shape are eloquent demonstrations of the possibilities of solar light. I know Olafur Eliasson, the Little Suns co-creator, thinks of them primarily as a means of bringing light to the billion human beings who don't have access to electricity. They are all these things and more.

And climate change was likely a factor in the turbulent weather in Asia in the fall of 2013. Charlie and some of the other Nomads had to reschedule their flights because of the typhoon that hit Hong Kong. Another ferocious typhoon hit India while they were trekking, and some of the torrential rain came inland as far as Nepal, where it covered the pass ahead of them in unseasonable snow. The sixty Nepalis, the thirty visitors, and their long caravan of horses and baggage mules were all forced to turn back from the 18,000-foot pass they had intended to cross on their circumambulation of Manaslu. Instead, they had to retreat the way they came. The situation became an emergency evacuation. Little Suns lit the way. As expedition co-director Caroll Dunham put it, "They proved essential to us in providing critical light along treacherous, muddy, stony, wet trails, with the potential of boulders falling as we had to walk way into pitch-dark nightfall. A single misstep could be death, and Little Suns prevented that."

When we talked about the role of Little Suns on his trip and in our friendship, Charlie brought up one of his favorite quotes, a line from Michel Foucault: "People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does." To contemplate the path from the coincidences that introduced me to Olafur Eliasson in 2007 to his 2011 request that I write for his Little Suns project and thus their coming into my hands to my conversation with Charlie in late 2012 to the delivery of 200 Little Suns to the Himalayas in 2013 is to trace a line that encompasses Iceland and Africa, Berlin where the Little Suns project is directed, California and the Himalayas, a thread of light and care wrapped around the world, and a major case of not knowing what you do does. It's the force that took 200 suns to the Himalayas, where they would aid surgeries and meals, dances and the reading of scriptures, and save lives on devastated trails. To understand their path is to understand Foucault's dictum well and deeply. Next year we hope to send 300 with the Nomads, though many more than that would be welcome.

The Role of the Buddhist Chaplain in Global Health: David Addiss

Those who take refuge in the Zen Peacemaker Order vow to live a life of engaged spirituality, guided by three tenets: Not knowing, giving up fixed ideas about oneself and the universe; bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world; and compassionate action, healing oneself and others.

Although global health practitioners are generally not familiar with the three tenets per se, the principles embodied by the tenets are central to sound global health practice. Not knowing is essential for planning, developing, or implementing any new intervention. All global health students are taught the unfortunate consequences and wasted resources associated with "solutions" to health problems, devised in North America or Europe, and "taken to the field" with no local input. The most significant advances in global health are made by those who have intentionally practiced not knowing - spending long periods of time or living with the communities they seek to serve, with no preconceptions, and responding to the direction of the community.

This is exemplified by Drs Abhay and Rani Bang, physicians educated at Johns Hopkins University, who returned to rural Gadchiroli, India, to establish the Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (Bang & Bang, 2013). They moved to this impoverished, underserved area and listened deeply, not knowing, to the community as it explored and eventually articulated its own health needs. The priorities for all of their pioneering and highly influential health research are established by the community, not by the Bangs' own research interests or those of external agencies.

The development of community-directed treatment with ivermectin is another example of the application of not knowing in global health. When ivermectin became available to treat isolated rural communities throughout West and Central Africa for onchocerciasis, an inexpensive, sustainable approach was needed. The practice of not knowing, of listening deeply to community needs, led to the development of community-directed treatment, in which the community - not an international agency or even a national government - decides if the community will participate, who will distribute ivermectin to the community, when treatment will occur, how many distributors will be trained, and whether they will receive monetary compensation (African Program for Onchocerciasis Control, 2012). Not knowing also has contributed to several major advances in global health, made by dedicated young people who either ignored or were uninformed that what they were attempting was "impossible."

One does not often hear the phrase "bearing witness" in global health circles; to many in global health, it has a rather passive ring, inconsistent with the active, problem-solving orientation of global health. Yet, at a May 20, 2013 conference in Atlanta on global health and hunger, Tom Frieden, the Director of CDC, said that "one of the major roles of public health is to bear witness." Intrigued by his use of this phrase, I wrote to Dr Frieden, formerly the Health Commissioner of New York City, to ask if he was familiar with Bernie Glassman. He was not. As a public health leader, Dr Frieden recognizes the power of bearing witness to shine a light on health inequities, to express and nurture solidarity with those who suffer, and to mobilize resources to transform that suffering.

Global health also is deeply concerned with compassionate action. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has colorfully highlighted the importance of action, saying that compassion "is not just a wish to see sentient beings free from suffering, but an immediate need to intervene and actively engage, to try to help...According to Buddhist thinking, if a person who has attained stability in his or her compassion training continues to stay in seclusion, that person is not really doing anything with compassion. That person should now be out, running around like a mad dog, actively engaged in acts of compassion" (Davidson & Harrington, 2002).

Global health practitioners tend to place too great an emphasis on the "action" part of compassionate action, on a frenetic effort to heal "the world" without an understanding or awareness of their own inner suffering. When global health leaders met at The Carter Center in 2010, Bill Foege suggested that "consequential compassion" was required for global health, distinguishing it from passive and ineffective compassion, i.e., compassion not linked to action. This term resonated with those who were present, and it may be a useful vehicle for bringing compassion into global health discourse (Addiss et al., submitted). However, the term does not seem to be informed by current models of compassion from psychology or neuroscience (Eisenberg, 2002; Goetz, Keltner & Simon-Thomas, 2010; Halifax, 2012; Lutz et al., 2008; Lutz, Greischar, Perlman, & Davidson, 2009; Klimecki et al., 2012).

I find "consequential compassion" problematic for three reasons. First, compassion does not cling to a particular outcome. One is compassionate regardless of whether one's compassionate act is "consequential." The compassion of Mother Teresa for the poor and the dying of Calcutta was arguably of little consequence as measured by indicators typically used in global health. Second, "consequential compassion" implies that one can gauge the veracity of compassion by a measurable outcome. In 2012, Jack Templeton, President and Chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, pointedly asked me, "If compassion has to be consequential, does the dedicated work of those working on a malaria vaccine, which eventually proves to be ineffective, not qualify as compassionate?" Third, compassion may be most needed, and most difficult, when nothing "consequential" can be done. In such settings, compassionate presence may be much more important than "compassionate action." Indeed, compassionate end-of-life care has little to do with consequences and everything to do with presence (Giles and Miller, 2012).

This is an excerpt from David's thesis completed in Upaya's Buddhist Chaplaincy Training, from the chapter "Global health and engaged Buddhism: shared values and foundations."

Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness. -Anne Frank

In an article in the Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, Roshi Joan’s article, “G.R.A.C.E. for nurses: Cultivating compassion in nurse/patient interactions," she defines compassion: “Compassion is considered to be the capacity to attend to the experience of others, to feel concern for others, to sense what will serve others, and potentially to be able to be of service." Given that Roshi agrees with His Holiness The Dalai Lama that compassion is not a luxury but is necessary for our well-being, resilience, and survival, it is not surprising that she has turned her attention to this pressing necessity in our culture and has developed a systems based heuristic map of compassion that is nonlinear, context sensitive, practical and amenable to training. The model draws on neuroscience, social psychology, ethics and contemplative perspectives.

The G.R.A.C.E. model is also designed to help prevent burnout, despair, and secondary trauma in clinicians. The process or practice also addresses the feelings of helplessness that frequently attend serving others in life-threatening or life-altering circumstances and situations. The medical profession and our society is always busy – in fact, it seems to me that we all tend to wear our busyness like a thorny crown (to quote Paul Simon, “Slip Sliding Away.") The Chinese image for busy has two parts – the upper is an image for “heart” and the bottom is an image for “killer." Busyness tends to close or “kill” the heart – or shut down compassion. Thus the practice of GRACE provides an opportunity in the midst of the endless busyness that characterizes not only the medical profession but most of modern life, to slow down, refocus attention, attune and chose appropriate action or response even in the midst of too much to do and too little time. It is both practical and profound. A game changer even in the midst of such insane busyness.

At the beginning of the workshop, Roshi asked us all to brainstorm and offer definitions for the word compassion. The wide swath of responses was moving and a reminder that while there seems to be general agreement that compassion is both feeling with the suffering of another and taking action to do what is possible to ease that suffering, the word itself evokes a multitude of affective responses whenever it is used. Roshi reminded us that once we know that compassion is selfless it becomes easier to know and recognize what stands in the way of this full open heartedness.

Fundamentally, compassion is simply described by Tanya Singer: “The emotion one experiences when feeling concern for another’s suffering and a desire to enhance their well being.” I appreciated the reminder from the team on Saturday morning about the importance of “feeling safe with ourselves” in our service to others. All of our chaplaincy work with spiritual formation, meditation practice and development of deeper understanding of our own triggers is essential to be able to serve with compassion, discernment and steadiness. Take your seat and never turn away.

Rev. Karin Lofthus Carrington is a recent graduate of the Chaplaincy Training Program. She took this photo in the Coptic tomb of Mary on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, contemplating Mary as an embodiment of compassion.

These talks, given by extraordinary Buddhist teachers such as Roshi Joan Halifax, Sharon Salzberg, Bernie Glassman, and many more, are offered to support your practice even if you live far away from Upaya.

Santa Fe Sangha Events

THURSDAYS (most), 9:20 am: Weekly Seminar, Upaya House living room - open to the public. Topic is usually related to the dharma talk of the evening before. To confirm that the seminar is happening that morning, please email temple@upaya.org.

SATURDAY, March 15: Jukai Ceremony 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.You are welcome to join us for this ceremony of receiving the precepts. If you plan to stay for the celebratory lunch afterward, please contact aine@upaya.org.

SUNDAY, March 16: Fusatsu Full Moon Ceremony, 5:30 p.m. A traditional Buddhist ceremony of atonement, purification, and renewing of the precepts. Upaya holds Fusatsu every month, usually on the day of the full moon. Please join us in the temple for this beautiful ceremony. *This is a correction from last week's newsletter which stated this month's Fusatsu would take place on the 27th.

SUNDAY, March 23: Dharma Discussion Group, Upaya House, 6:30 pm Please join Upaya's Local Sangha as we begin a study of the Five Buddha Families. The group meets informally from 6:30-7 pm at Upaya House with tea and cookies, with the formal program running from 7- 8:30 pm. We encourage participants to start by joining the residents for the 5:30 zazen practice. All are welcome as we discuss, explore and further our practice.

SUNDAY, March 30: Meditation Instruction, 3:00 p.m.An offering of temple etiquette and instruction in Zen forms for those who are new to meditation and practice at Upaya. There is no fee, but registration is recommended. Please contact temple@upaya.org or 505-986-8518 x21.

You are an important part of Upaya's community! Thank you for your participation, and for sharing this with anyone else who may be interested.

Stones Needed for Labyrinth at Upaya

We are creating a stone labyrinth at Upaya for the use of residents, guests, and local sangha. We are currently collecting stones from the local area and we could use your help! We are looking for stones about the size of an orange or grapefruit, 4 inches across. If you have any to contribute, or have some good leads on sources, please let us know. Contact aine@upaya.org.

Appearing across cultures over the course of at least 5,000 years, the unicursal labyrinth is an archetypal symbol. Its spiraling design can take varied shapes, sizes, and patterns, but it differs from a puzzle maze in that there is always only one path to the center with no forks, dead ends, or intersections en route to the center. In the last twenty years, the labyrinth has undergone a large-scale re-emergence from obscurity, coming into popular use for walking and tracing as an experiential practice. There is no prescribed method for this practice, but the path itself serves as a container for personal reflection and a metaphorical mirror for the larger journeys of our lives. As a nonsectarian tool for finding calm and insight, labyrinths are now proliferating in their uses worldwide and are being adopted by an increasing number of public parks and community gardens, hospitals, schools, churches, and retreat centers. More and more research indicates the benefits of following the labyrinth’s path to the center and back for mental health and holistic well-being.

CEUs and CNEs for 2014: Attention Therapists, Counselors, Social Workers, and Nurses

Upaya invites nurses, counselors, therapists, and social workers to attend our special retreats and trainings where CNEs and CEUs may be earned.

Calgary, AB, Canada: Calgary Contemplative End of Life Care Practice Group. For professionals and volunteers working with people who are dying. Second Monday each month at Hospice Calgary's Sage Center, 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Sit starts at 7 pm. For further information, contact laurie.lemieux@hospicecalgary.com

NEW: Westbury, Wiltshire, U.K. This new group will hold its first meeting on Sunday, October 27th from 3-5 pm at The East Wing, 35 Church Street, Westbury, Wiltshire. For more info, e-mail Jan Mojsa, janmojsa@googlemail.com.